France’s King Louis XIV was offered biological weapons by an Italian chemist. He not only refused, but also paid the chemist an annual salary to never reveal the technology to anyone else.
21
Iceland has been so culturally isolated through history since the Vikings, that compared to other Scandinavian counties, people who speak Icelandic can still read the old Norsk sagas.
4
Instead of McDonald's tearing down a ~200-year-old Georgian mansion, citizens of a small NY town forced them to renovate it instead, resulting in a uniquely historic franchise location.
7
50 years ago Cheerios were called Cheerioats.
99
The word 'mile' is derived from the Latin word for 1,000 - the number of paces it took the average Roman!
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